The field of the invention generally relates to refrigerators, and more particularly relates to apparatus and method for attaching shelves to the door liner.
As is well known, refrigerators typically have shelves or buckets in the doors. Such shelves are popular because they generally increase the storage capacity of a refrigerator, and also there is convenient access to items stored in the door.
One prior art door shelf approach is to form a horizontal support surface in the door liner, and then affix a retainer bar across the front so that stored items such as bottles or milk cartons will not fall off the horizontal support surface. An advantage of this configuration is that it is relatively inexpensive to fabricate because the shelf support surface is formed when the liner is made by a vacuum form process. However, the height of such a shelf is not adjustable, and therefore the configurations of shelves is not versatile. That is, the owner cannot reconfigure the heights of various shelves to obtain an optimum arrangement for the food items that are typically stored. Further, such shelves typically will not contain spills because they don't have a water-tight bucket. Therefore, if milk or soft drinks are spilled, the liquid runs down over the entire door. Another disadvantage is that there are no serviceable parts. That is, if a portion of the support surface cracks or is broken, the entire liner must be replaced because there are not smaller integral parts that can be replaced.
Another door shelf approach is to use a door liner that has a vertical row of slots at each side, and provide a plurality of injection molded plastic bucket shelves each of which has hooks that insert into a respective pair of the slots. In an alternate embodiment of this approach, the slots can be formed in metal brackets that attach in front or behind the liner so as to provide increased strength. This general approach offers height adjustability, and also the bucket shelves has sealed bottoms that will contain spills. A further advantage is that the shelves can be removed for cleaning. However, with such shelves, the entire load of a shelf and its contents is carried by the hooks rather than being distributed over a relatively large area. Accordingly, relatively thick gauges of plastic must be used, and even then, the hooks are subject to breaking. Relatively thick material gauges are also required to minimize the flexing of the shelf. Also, consumers typically complain about the aesthetics because they don't like the rows of holes or slots in the liner. Another drawback of this approach is that if metal brackets and/or metal hooks are used so as to increase the strength, cost is greatly increased by the additional parts and labor to assemble them.
Still another door shelf approach is to use a door liner that has side panels or dikes with a structural geometry to support shelves. In one such arrangement, horizontal support slats or ledges are formed in the dikes, and ends of the shelf are seated or them. The support slats have upwardly extending bosses at the front to prevent a shelf from sliding forward. However, the shelf is not locked in place and is only maintained in position by gravity. Accordingly, when such a shelf is inadvertently bumped, it is easily knocked off the support slats and broken. Also, such a shelf does not contain spills. In another arrangement, short posts extend laterally inward from the opposing sides, and a shelf has corresponding recesses that are seated down onto respective posts. Because of the shape of the posts, they are independently fabricated and then attached to the vacuum formed liner. This fabrication process involves extra parts and additional labor. Also, the shelves are still supported by gravity, and therefore are subject to being inadvertently knocked off the posts. Further, because of liner dimension tolerances, these shelves are often difficult to insert and remove.